Stommped asked Ghostcrawler why Balance Druids had dynamic-crit on their DoT ticks, whereas every other class had static snapshot values. Here’s the response:

Good question. We decided to dig into all of the dots and found they worked pretty inconsistently. (Consistency isn’t always critical because it does lead to a certain amount of homogeneity, but too little consistency can just be confusing too.) We made a pass at all of the class dots and made them snapshot crit chance. This will have implications in any simulations out there.

However, this has some implications on the Unerring Vision of Lei Shen trinket. We’re tentatively fine with the idea of you seeing that proc go off, and reapplying DoTs which crit for their whole duration, in most cases. There’s a couple cases where those periodic crits cause other effects, which end up being very powerful. For example, a Balance Druid can now apply Moonfire and Sunfire, and pretty much chain instant Starsurges for 15 sec, many of which are extending that Moonfire and Sunfire, probably out to 20-25 sec. That’s extremely strong, but we’re going to try leaving it alone for now.

This change is going to be a huge DPS increase, especially with the trinket. Consequently (given it were to proc), it would help alleviate problems with movement DPS.

I was really planning on using this round up to rant about our movement DPS and AoE DPS, and the 9% buff (while welcome) is just a bandaid to our DPS issues and not really solving the problem. I guess I’ll table that for now.

It is important to note, though, how one person can make positive change for a spec.

Not a lot has happened in 5.2 news this week, although Ghostcrawler did end up revealing a slight buff to balance druids tonight.

Note this is an initial pass and numbers may vary. From the PTR forum, Ghostcrawler writes:

I may regret this, because I don’t know that I can capture every one and we iterate on this stuff really rapidly.

We may change a number one day and change it again the next when we look at AE or PvP damage or whatever. If frequent iteration scares you, look away! But in the interest of providing context and helping theorycrafting, I’ll give it a go.DPS Tuning Adjustments-

Arms – Increased Deep Wounds by +100%

Balance – Increased Starfire, Wrath and Starsurge by 9%.

Mind Blast – Increased Mind Blast by 20%. (Yeah I know you have to stop and cast it modulo procs, but I meant in contrast to Mind Flay which makes you really plant.)

I’m glad we do have a buff to our sustained damage, and this will compensate for the nerf to Nature’s Vigil, but it still doesn’t resolve our core issues we have around movement and Nature’s Grace. We’re too dependent on Nature’s Grace for both our AoE DPS as well as our single target DPS, and utilizing it for our AoE DPS just nerfs our continued single target after. Unless the plan is just to make us do so much turret DPS we can afford to take the damage loss during movement, but I don’t see that as being the case, at least not with a 9% increase, and that would just make us overpowered on Patchwerk style fights.

If you’ve been following my Twitter, you’ll know that I’ve stepped down from raiding and canceled my active subscription. Sunfyre’s Nest is about to turn four, and I’m too old to keep spending as many hours as I have killing internet dragons. Unfortunately I’m an “all or nothing” type player, so I can’t really play casually. This won’t affect my blogging, and I’m going to try to actually editorialize more and provide a weekly roll-up of news and opinions from the last week. I will still be an active participant and moderator in the MMO-Champion Druid Forums.

In actual balance druid news, don’t be dismayed that we haven’t seen much PvE balancing in 5.2. In a response to a PTR question, Ghostcrawler stated the following:

This is a legit PvE nerf, but a very, very small one and as I said, we haven’t made any PvE numbers adjustments to anyone yet. This one is easy to fix without PvP risk and it makes a glyph less mandatory for its DPS benefits.

It does appear the Nature’s Vigil was a PvP nerf. Hopefully we will see some sort of change to counter it for PvE.

Also, if you’ve been following the soap opera that is known as Cyclone, it’s now back to 20 yards, with the 2-piece PvP bonus extending it’s range by 5 yards. Ferals will be hit with a 20 second cooldown.

Squawkbox

Latest on Mon, 08:16 am

Athosian: @Thravia - at 16.5k crit u can effectively stack mastery. But.. you must have the T16 4set in order to not loose out on procs.

Thravia: Hi Sunfyre.
According to all my calculations, and simulationcrafts, mastery is better than both haste and crit, and especially better than haste once you get past the GCD cap - so why are all balance druids going full on with crit/haste?
I am having trouble figuring out what is most effective, and I am currently creating a BiS list for 5.4, but I don't know if I should go with a mastery/haste build, or crit/haste.
Here is a chart of my stat weights, http://i.imgur.com/lQMfnFV.png (I am currently at 10300 haste, 16000 crit, and 547 item level)

Kogot: Hey! Just wanted to say thanks for having this page! I love it!

Sunfyre: Thravia: Not sure. I'm curious how this interacts with the nerf. If it's 8% on all targets, that'd be nice.

Sunfyre: Quiver: I'd stick with the lower BP until you can comfortably hit the higher one without sacrificing too much crit.

Thravia: Hi Sunfyre. Whats your thougths on the new T16 set bonus? It's been changed again.

Quiver: Hi Sunfyre!
I am low ilvl Boomkin (around 517). After getting the 1st haste breakpoint(5273) i started stacking as much crit as possible. If i squeeze my gear, i can get to the 2nd haste breakpoint (10296); now, my question is: should i somewhat neglect crit and go for that 2nd haste plateau?
Thanks in advance!

Manax: Hello Sunfyre, do you think balance druids one of the worst dps classes in mop? I mean... look at worldoflogs, there are no balance druids in the top dps sections at no boss. Always WL, Mages or hunter that are good on ranged bosses. And AOE dps poor too, compared to other classes. What do you think?

Sunfyre: It depends if you have RPPM proc'd items. If you have two RPPM items (or just the legendary meta), you'll want to do the pre-Solar start (and you immediately proc CA once you hit Solar).

Nodotx: Sunfyre, is one channelling pulse towards Lunar still the ideal opener? i.e. Starfall > Wrath > Lunar Eclipse?
I saw this reply recently on a thread:
"I'm not sure why OP still says start fight pre-lunar, long time ago I switched to Solar eclipse.
I pre pot, starfall, (one dot), CA + INCA (or 3x treants), dotting (by this time most if not all procs are up- both dots AND treants enjoy it) and starifre\ss, starfall again.
when u leave CA u auto moving to lunar eclipse- which get u 3rd starfall.
with the old opner, Until u enter lunar, and starfire\ss to 0 energy and poping ca- most procs are pretty much over "